Casting The Flag
by Palaemona
Summary: She knows that he shouldn't get the painless way out, not when she's here and suffering for it. She wants him to know the misery and pain she had suffocated in. the silence and the dread, with only the steady movement of time breaking the shadows apart. She was willing to sacrificed the good of the world, to ensure he suffered. Just like she suffered. Warning:Self Harm, Torture.


**Casting the Flag**

_The funeral for a man I have known my entire life is planned for the next week, starting an hour after I begin my shift at work. I'm so sick of cancer and death. Right now, I feel angry and rather pissed off. I'm done crying. I want to write everything out, in a way that I see them. I want life to be written down the way I see. Dead and silent. I want it cruel with a miserable ending, because life was never meant to be happy. _

_Ginny was possessed and nearly killed for the sake of evil. If I were her, I would want to claim revenge. And I would want to do so I such a way it bleeds blackness. She wants to fight with life, and when she realizes she cannot, I want her to give up life. _

'_Red Flag', a song that I adore. Enjoy, will you?_

**~()~**

_**Cast off the crutch that kills the pain  
The Red Flag waving never meant the same  
The kids of tomorrow don't need today  
When they live in the sins of yesterday**_

Cast off the crutch that kills the pain  
The Red Flag waving never meant the same  
The kids of tomorrow don't need today  
When they live in the sins of yesterday

**~()~**

It was silent when the war was finished.

She hadn't known what she had expected. Perhaps, screams of the Death Eaters as they watched their leader become nothing. Or the rampaging battle to continue, with one or the other dead. She had expected the violent mourning of the light rain down on the fallen Boy-Who-Lived. Perhaps she had never expected to make it this far. But she did. She did so by throwing hex after hex, aiming cutting curses for necks, and slamming at faces her bone crunching hexes. She had been given the news of Fred, or Tonks, of hundreds she had known fall to the darkness. But she hadn't.

The silence was smothering.

The feel of the eyes on her back, as she walked calmly away. Because the war was done and over with, the Death Eaters remained on the ground bound or dead. Or, in some cases, _gone_.

Within seconds, her carefully measured stride was turned into a furious sprint, her feet slapping against the cold, bloodied ground. Her footsteps echoing through the entire castle. Breaking the silence. "_Accio_ broom!" she had screamed, summoning some broom stick at the wide open doors that had scorch marks along the sides. Within moments she had mounted and risen, taking to the sky. Tears of pain trailed down her cheeks, and she loathed them.

She had sworn to never cry these painful, warm tears ever again. After a year of the diary, she had sworn she'd never return to that darkness. But that was a lie. She wanted to forget. She wants to pretend that it had never happened. She had never gone home to discover within her books was a journal, and that if she wrote in that journal, she would find someone within the ink, coaxing secrets that she had stowed away for years.

But she knew that when she wrote something down on a piece of parchment, and paused as she waited for a response that would never come, that she would never forget. When she scrawled the name 'Tom' out to begin her message. When the strangled hiss of '_open'_ erupted from her mouth in dead of night.

She hated Harry for a long time. She had fallen in a sort of love with the man that tried to steal her body away from her. The way he had _listened_ to her. Within a moment, it was Tom and her, with the journal, and then blackness. Before she knew it, Harry was there and Tom was gone, and her beloved journal was nothing more than an empty journal with a Basilisk fang piercing through. Nothing was the same.

No one knew exactly what had happened, or how it had happened. But they knew that she was somehow involved with it, for when she woke from her sleep screaming for Tom, or when she began to tremble when she picked a quill up. How she paled under the weight of the eyes watching her. How she cringed when one spoke her name.

She had flown far into the night when she saw him. The long blond hair with the wind ripping through it had caught her eyes. He was alone, with blood dripping from his hands, she noticed. And no wife nor son. Just blood. Limping along the path out to the highlands. If, she wanted to, she could use the killing curse and end it all. End the circle of death and want. End it there and then.

But she doesn't.

She knows that he shouldn't get the painless way out, not when she's here and suffering for it. She wants him to know the misery and pain she had suffocated in. the silence and the dread, with only the steady movement of time breaking the shadows apart.

She quietly landed. The sword he carried was a delicate instrument, with glinting silver reflecting the light of the moon and stars. How the blood stains it, looking black in the night. Gods, how she wants to use the blade and rip through his neck with it.

So she lands violent body freezing charms, sending his spine straight and eyes wide. She likes that look frozen on his face. Horror. Surprise. And the faint sign of fear in his eyes, and nostrils flared. She removed the sword from his grip, and relents the charm just a slight bit. Enough for his facial features to relax some, and so he can speak. Because Gods, she has longed for this moment far too long.

"Ginny Weasley." He practically hisses, and she flinches. The fear in his eyes vanishes, masked behind anger and loathing.

"Malfoy." She states. The sword feels so heavy in her hands, weighed down by death and murder. "Did you have to kill them?"

"Yes. Death is a game for the grownups, not for children. Release this foolish spell, and kindly return my sword, and I shall allow you to live." He talks down to her, looking at her if she's nothing but a child. A child that has killed his companions, and a child he had given the book of hell to.

She smiles at him. She doesn't smile those fake ones she used for the past six years of her life, but the one that holds the darkness and promises she longed to claim. Because she has him, like a fly in a web. She's no longer the Spector, but rather the predator.

She says nothing to him. Not at first. She just steps forward, lifts the blade and brings it down hard, only to pause mid strike. It stops an inch from slicing through his shoulder. She wants to do it, she wants to feel his blood on her hands, but she can't. She is no longer a child hiding behind her father's shadow; she's killed plenty tonight already.

"Do you know why I want to do this?" She whispers, looking up into his eyes. Green meets silver, and the world fades away into a new one, filled with lies and blood.

He gives her a long look of loathing. "No. and I suspect that you do not understand what you want either."

~()~

Its dawn by the time she leaves the basement. It's a house half caved in, with a door the hung on one hinge. The chimney is thrown about the overgrown yards, clumps of bricks here and there. Windows remain, shattered holes in the shadowed house, and vines crawl up the walls. She does find, however, a large basement with a stone floor and walls, with layers of grime on everything. She throws him in the corner; she conjured cuffs and manacles to bind him with. Every dagger hidden on his body and the two wands are gone, safely stored inside what remains of the chimney. Tucked away in a small metal box she managed to transfigure from a brick, hiding away the weapons of this man.

She is fine with the blood that drips from her hands. Despite lifting the blade, trying to cut into him, she cannot. Not yet.

So she uses her hands. She slams her fists into his face, kicks raining down on his sides. She feels such fury she cannot help but release it all in a never ending rage that leaves the High Pureblood a miserable, battered, beaten thing. The skin that covers her knuckles has been stretched and bloodied since the first blow. She tries to feel the pain that is surely there, but she doesn't feel it.

What she does feel, though. Is that this is not enough.

She needs more. She needs to feel the blood course over her like a water fall. Let his screams be the ones that deafen her. Let his tears blind her. But for now, she allows it to be it.

She doesn't feel guilt. She should, but she doesn't.

Ginny doesn't know if she is dark or if she is light. Perhaps this is the right thing to do. Getting the final say in life, avenging those moments where she lost herself to Tom. Malfoy is alive. She gave him enough healing spells to ensure that he would live. She gave him one candle, remaining on the far other side of the basement. It casted more shadows than light, but that was fine. For a man that fought for the dark, he could live in the dark.

There is a brief moment, when she feels terror claw at her. If anyone found out. If anyone knew. She would be shamed publically and dragged to Azkaban. She kidnapped a man, murderer but man, and beat him to near death, just to heal him so she can do it all over again the next day. She begins to claw at her skin, trying to hide herself inside the paleness of it. Her blood mixes with his blood, and his wails mix with her wails. She falls to the ground, with the hollow thud, and the clang at the sword hits the wooden floor. The floor groans with the weight, and she flinches at it.

She had never thought that she would ever lay hands on the man, much less make her fantasies come to life. God, never had she thought that she would capture him and feel his blood. So warm yet cold, so red but black. An endless contradiction. It's light and dark, and dark and light.

She vomits, shaking on all fours. If only the world could see her now. Her mother would turn away, her father would disown her. Her brothers wouldn't recognize her ever again. Harry would be disgusted at what she had been twisted into. But, Tom would have been so proud.

Dry heaving, she's reduced to a miserable, crying thing.

But, when the suffering is over, she feels better. Stronger.

It's an invincible feeling that surges through her veins, telling her things she never thought she could do. It's a feeling that's ever so seducing, that burns her with such desirable pleasure. She swears and promises and vows to destroy this man.

It's the least she can do; for all that he has done to her.

She pulls herself up, and looks around the decayed building. She begins to cast spells and design wards interwoven with runes. She uses one of his spare wands, to ensure no trace could be activated and discovered. She had no plans to ever return to Hogwarts. To be expelled now would bring her no shame. But the letters, the questions.

They would find her secret.

Finished by the final carving, the one of Bloodshed. It would protect the secrets found inside the house, and that no one would ever breathe a single word of what was beneath the foundations. Blood and murder controlled the house, swaying its decisions to the ones of murder.

It would fuel her rage and burn into her soul, twist her mind to one of evil and self-justification.

Innocence and light meant nothing in this house. Revenge and war shaped the life behind the doors.

~()~

Its four days since the battle when she returns to the Burrow. Her mother throws her arms around her neck, demanding to know where she has been and she missed the burial of Fred.

She had forgotten. This house she was raised in is now smothered under the constant presence of death.

But, she smiles a little grimly, and just mumbles, "I got drunk, Mum."

She is scolded and led to the kitchen were Ron is sitting with Harry playing chess, and Percy gazing out the window with his back turned to the occupants. The prodigal son had returned. And it cost the family the one son that had never abandoned them from the start. She feels darkness at the mere sight of him so alive, breathing with blood flowing through his veins.

She wishes that it had been Percy that had died, not Fred.

And she _smiles_ at the idea of it all.

She sits at the table, and offers a small smile to her sibling and the hero of the world. The ask where she went, and she just grins and playfully draws a finger to her lip. They grin, and she asks where Hermione is.

Recovering.

One spell too many, apparently.

It's then, when she notices the blood underneath her nails, and the battered knuckles. Harry notices as well.

"I must have gotten in a fight somewhere. Woke up on some street corner an hour or so ago," She mumbled, yawning. She splays her arms out over the table and admires the bruises covering it. 'Accidently' she had knocked over several pawns and a glass of water.

She pulls of the act of a mindless drunk rather well, surprisingly. She had never really drank much before, never daring more than a few sips from her father's Dragon Whiskey left out for a dare. But, she had seen her brothers all in the stages of drunkenness. The denial, the stupidity, the foolish brawls. Clumsiness. And finally, sleep.

She is escorted then, to her room with a Hangover Cure pushed in her hand by her mother, and the covers gently pulled back. It's a warm sensation that fills her, promising and gentle. But it feels alien to her now, so strange. So odd. She accepts it silently though, and crawls beneath the cold blankets, and shuts her eyes.

Malfoy is probably awake now, but she isn't worried. The wards of the house recognized him as prisoner, and would force him to remain in the basement even if he managed to free himself of his chains.

She wonders how much pain he feels now. Or if he is numb to it all. She managed to use that wonderfully crafted blade, and awkwardly cut into his torso, sawing into the skin. The first cut was so foreign, and she is unsure how to proceed. But the second cut wasn't quite so odd. She fixed her grip on the hilt in a manner so much more suited for such torture, and by the third cut she was so much more elegant in cutting, strong and forcefully, tearing down deep.

It felt so good.

She's unsure how long he will stay alive, or when she will end his life. But for now, she is content in living this life on the darkened path. Allowing the thorns to grab hold of her arms and pull her to the way far darker than her life.

It feels good and empowering to hold such power over him. How he had done the same to her. Slipped her the journal knowing how it would slowly destroy her in such a pleasurable way. How he knew her life was unraveling from the strands, leaving her horrified of what was becoming of herself, with blood stained hands. She remembered the way her father had been so unsure of her after, unsure of how to act, how to speak and how to even breathe with her in the room. Her mother treated her like she was nothing but cracked and chipped glass, shattering with the next blow. Her brothers had moved on completely, not understanding the violation she had suffered.

But, now, he will.

Because she will violate him the way she had been. She will taunt him at his worst moments; spit back every word to his bloodied face. And when the time comes, she will kill him.

She drifts off asleep with a small, welcomed smile playing with her lips.

~()~

She ventures from her room quietly, stepping lightly. George's door is sealed shut, hiding the mourning man that had hidden his face from the world. Percy was inside his own, door wide open. She leans against the door frame, and looks in. he's writing furiously on a parchment, and she's almost gleeful.

"Writing a report about Caldron Bottoms?" She questioned, allowing a piece of hair to fall in front of her eyes.

He flinched at the sound of her harsh voice, and turned. "To Penny." He offered. Waiting.

"She alive still? Didn't see her fighting." Her voice is ruff. Uneven.

His hands become fists as he tries to contain his emotions. "She left the country."

"Like a coward?" She laughs such a bitter, harsh laugh she never knew she had. "Sounds like you.|

He grits his teeth. "_Something_ you wanted?"

She gives him a blank stare. But it's enough for him to know.

She doesn't want Percy back. She wants Fred back. She wants Tom back. But instead, she has the brother that never meant a thing to her alive and breathing.

If she had her way, he would have his throat split, and his eyes gorged out.

Gods, he breathes loudly.

He swallows, the noise filling the room. "Is there something you want, Ginny?"

She leans forward, not straying from the boundary of the door and his room. "Yes. I wanted to know why you came back alive."

She left him, spinning on her heel and gliding through the halls and stairwells. She knows that she left him stunned, as if he was trying to swallow a brick. She had seen such reactions thousands of times, when _Fred_ and George made a snide comment to the elder one.

She forces the bitter laugh away, because it frightens her a little. What she is becoming. What she is _accepting_.

She practically collides with Harry, her face meeting his chest.

"Don't you know it's impolite to knock witches over?" She questions, masking any emotion with an innocent face.

"Sorry, 'Gin." He mumbles, his eyes half opened and burdened with sleep, and glasses hanging crooked on his face.

She forces out a laugh when she spots the wild hair he sports, "You saved the world. Go to sleep."

"I wanted to find you first," He pushes on, ignoring her last comment, rubbing the sleep free from his eyes.

"Alright. Speak, and then sleep, Potter." She relents, waiting for what he seems to be burdened do with.

"I wanted to say sorry, for breaking it off with you, like I did," His eyes remained fixed at the floor. "And I wanted to know if you would consider another try at a relationship."

_Coward_.

It's a sickening sight. She can smell the whisky off his skin, and the way his words almost slur together. She knows what happened. After all, with the war gone and no one trying to aim a knife in the chosen one's back, who could even think of stopping him from getting wasted?

But she is Ginny Weasley. Daughter of the Muggle Loving Fool. Sister to the Boy-Who-Lived-And-Won's best friend. Companion to the Chosen One's closest female friend.

So she smiles. She just bats her eyes, and winks.

"Maybe when you sober up, we'll talk."

~()~

He holds her hand tightly, talking to Ron the entire time. She's used to being like this, silent. She's the good little Weasley Girl placed on display for the entire world to see. She smiles like she is supposed to, and nods when they direct a question to her.

Hermione looks at her, watching.

Molly just smiles at the sight of the four so happy, so _alive_.

Arthur has several papers sprawled out over his area at the table, looking up ever so often. "They never did find Malfoy, after the Final Battle."

"Did he leave the country after murdering his family?" Molly asked, concern flirting across her face.

Harry looks up surprised, and Ron laughs. "Finally that Malfoy git got what he deserved."

"Ronald Weasley!" Molly snaps, glaring. "That boy was found lying in the ditch dead, with his throat slit."

"After everything he did to us back in school?" Ron snorts. "Who cares?"

"His father is war criminal. He murdered his wife and his son to ensure his own safety. What sort of vile creature does that?" Arthur raged. "We have several teams of Aurors searching for him, but so many are hunting down other Death Eaters, it's impossible."

"Whatever." Ron shrugged. Harry's silent, and Ginny is smiling.

"I'm going to go see Luna, and see how she is doing." Ginny stands, dropping Harry's hand immediately.

Harry jumps up as well. "I'll go with you." Hermione nods as she to stands, Ron following suit.

Ginny swallows and shakes her head. "I need to talk with her about something. Private."

Harry tries to send his best 'wide eyed' look. "Come on, please Gin?"

"Stop calling me Gin!" She yells at him. She storms out of the house, and with a tremendous crack like thunder, she disappeared away from the Burrow, to the Hollow.

~()~

The Hollows stands in front of her, door firmly in place. She can hear the screaming and yelling of Malfoy, and she smiles. Home sweet home.

She creeps through the door, and slips down the basement entrance, snatching the sword as she moved by. The blond haired man looked up, and she shivered with wonder at the fear in his eyes. "Hello, Malfoy." She drawled, anxiety melting away.

"Miss me, little girl?" He croaked, pulling his knees up to his chest.

Everything feels so right. So perfect. "Ever so much."

Her foot lands square in his face, and she feels the satisfying crunch of his nose, and how his blood mixes with his tears.

"Does it make you feel better?" He groans out.

"Did it make you feel better when you killed your wife and son?"

A question for a question.

Her movements are rough and needy, slamming fists against battered body, slicing sword through bruised skin. She can't stop because of how right it feels, making him scream his throat raw. She can't ignore the swirling emotions inside her mind through, or the blood staining her hands. She knows this is wrong. She could be sentenced to death for what she is doing. He's breaking. Shattering. Dying.

When she pauses, she is pleased.

He looks her in the eye, and smiles. "Are you done, princess?"

"Common sense would say you might wish to skip calling the one with the sword names." She sits far enough of away from him, settling herself comfortably on the grimy floor, admiring the blood on the blade.

"You are still not satisfied, are you?" His voice seems to slither over the cool air.

She shrugs, allowing the blade to glide over her own skin, creating tiny little cuts that seem to burn. "Not yet."

"And when will you be?"

She looks up, wide eyed and scared.

She doesn't know.

~()~

How she first started to have sex with Malfoy, she never knew.

It was never ending battle for dominance. Fighting and seeking for power. He thrusts into her with force, and she responds with raking her nails down his bloodied back. He bites her neck, drawing blood, and she grips his arms tightly, shuddering with the passion and the heat. The grime and the sweat create a never ending layer to her skin, and his blood mixes with her own. She cries out, screaming Tom's name. Malfoy groans out Bellatrix.

She never pictured her life so warped, so shaded. She was to marry Harry and have children in one life, live close to home and fill her own house with the scent of baking.

Now, she was here.

Delusional and lost, determined to correct her life. Make right of the wrongs. Defile the guilty. Finish the weak.

She grits her teeth as he pounds into her harder, yanking her hair, snapping her head back. She slaps him, a loud, sharp noise filling the room. She's burned away every last piece of his tattered robes, creating burns that scorched his skin. Her robes were carefully removed and placed near the stairs, preventing them from becoming torn.

She wonders, why he cries for Bellatrix. The sister of his wife he murdered.

Bellatrix was a twisted woman, so insane, so crazed.

This isn't soft and loving, with gentle kisses. No innocent touches or soft strokes. No. that isn't life, nor reality. Not her reality, anyways. It's rough and heated, with blood dripping from her nails as she fights him for the surging power.

It's everything she feels, but physically. A never ending torment, trying to reign the escalating power. She savours the pain when his nails cut deep into her thighs, clumsy with the cuffs restraining his movements.

He's offering himself to her, naked and torn.

She accepts.

She notices the way his eyes narrow when she screams for Tom, and she likes it.

~()~

He proposed to her at night in the gardens beneath the stars. Two weeks after the awful sin preformed with Malfoy, and she still longs for more.

Her mother shrieks and suffocates them in a hug before she could say a word. Ron claps Harry on the shoulder and announces, "Good on you mate."

George had been dragged from his room and gazes at her quietly, not smiling or frowning. Percy offer his congratulations much to Ginny's displeasure, and Hermione hugs her tightly and drones on about how romantic it is and isn't she happy and of how exciting it is. Arthur summons bottle after bottle of the strongest wine he had stowed away, and they're all talking at once.

"This'll be grand. Harry'll be finally part of the family for real now." Ron prattles to their mother, and Harry is shaking Arthur's hand, and Bill and Charlie are teasing him now, calling him the stray that they finally adopt.

Fleur is kissing her on both cheeks, before running off to Bill, her stomach swollen with life. Harry's blushing bright red, and Charlie is messing his hair-an action so much like Fred that it hurts.

Percy is looking at her straight in the eyes. "Aren't you happy?"

"Shouldn't you be dead?" She shot back, shoving him away. George looks up from his bottle that he's slowly nursing.

"Ginny, I am sorry. I cannot bring back the dead." Percy is trying to ease the pain and the hate so weakly, so pathetically. It enrages her.

She swallows. "Then why did you come back?" She's feeling the voices collide with one another in her head, shouting and raging, fighting to be heard. "Fred should never have died! But because of you, he's buried! Are you happy now, you backstabbing bastard!" She screams at him.

George slowly stands.

Everyone is watching.

"She's right." He mumbles.

Everyone is speaking at once.

"How dare you say that?" Molly screeches.

Her heart is pounding, and she feels every thought melt away into one.

"I don't want to marry you." She's whispering the words, grasping tightly like they might carry her away to freedom.

Harry is looking at Ginny blankly. "Gin, you don't really mean that, do you?"

"My name isn't Gin, for God's sake. I don't want to marry you. I can't stand you. I wish you dead!" She's howling her grief now. "I never said yes, and you all assumed I would! I hated you when you left me, you had no right! I'm not some doll you can just abandon because you got scared. How the bloody hell do you think I felt, when you went hunting for those Merlin Damned soul ties?"

No one stops her when she leaves.

Not even George.

~()~

She's pregnant.

Perhaps three weeks had passed slowly and painfully since the awful, unspeakable deed preformed with Malfoy. Harry left to some motel room, and she is greeted warmly with the looks of scorn and shame from her family. All but George. Ron refuses to look at her.

She had taken a Muggle Studies course, back before the war became so real, so vivid. The Amish had been a chapter well explored and detailed for their surprising simplicity, and how similar they were to wizards. With such progress expanding around their lives, they remained firmly planted in their strange beliefs and customs, demanding no change. And when one foolish child fell from the division, they were greeted with silence and firm displeasure.

She ate her meals in silence, ignoring the heated stare from Hermione, boring into her skull. George responds silently, handing her the mashed potatoes or the gravy boat, but squeezing her hands beneath the table. Charlie and Bill are in disbelief, unsure of what to say or how to look. So they don't. Bill fled to his pregnant wife, dragging Charlie behind. Fleur had quietly left, leaving a rather poisonous glare to the Girl-Who-Disappointed.

Her mother just cried.

Percy had gone missing two hours after Ginny left, and no one would ever find his transfigured remains lying underneath a large rock in Ireland. She had found him searching for her with a wand in hand, and a killing curse forming at his lips. She had just smiled, and thrown a dagger to grace his throat bloody. It had been child's play, transfiguring the dead body to a child's doll, the easiest transfiguration she could manage. The doll had slightly rather human hair, and his eyes seemed to gleam a little more than fake buttons, but she managed it.

Her daughter refused marriage, her son is missing. The son she dreamed of for so long was refused. Molly saw no point to keeping this family alive.

Harry returns for an hour or so, and she is greeted with the heart broken expressions, leaving her to drown them out with the sharp Muggle whiskey stowed away in the cellar.

She gets wasted and smashed, and leaves to the Hollow. She's purely animalistic then, pacing and tearing at her hair. Her child is forming in her womb, so real. Spawn of the man she hated most, created in a heat of misery and passion. Malfoy shouts words at her to quiet her foolish worries and go back to being the little Princess, and then she's carving his tongue out with her sword.

It's an awful life she lives, so dark. She's drowning in a sea of despair, struggling to breathe and keep the walls of pressure away from herself, beating her hands against the door to try and break the lock. But she can't. Because that was her past and this is her present which will define her future.

But everything must end- no matter how sweet, how tormented.

The sun sneaks through the cracks of the floor, lighting the basement, and bringing to life the blood stains, and the bloodied mess that could no longer be defined as human. Not with him backed in a corner with his head down, hair drunkenly hacked off.

The sun is shining so bright, burning through her soul. She wants to take his hand and break each finger, but she refuses.

Because everything ends.

~()~

He's silent now.

She talks. More often than ever.

She spills secrets, worries. Ones that no one had ever been told. She tells him of Tom, and how sweet and wonderful he had been. She never blamed him for trying to steal her soul, not when she would have willingly given it to him. For the greater good, in her demented mind.

He doesn't ask her any questions, not now. She doesn't suffer from his scathing remarks, not when she cries about the life created inside her. Growing steadily. She lifted her robs slightly to reveal the bloody stomach, with long lines marring the paleness of it. How she tried to carve the demon's spawn free from inside her when she was in a drunken rage miles from both the burrow, and the hollow.

She doesn't care for snide remarks and droning pleasantries. In her mind, it's better. He listens, she unburdens herself.

She's unraveling, and it's driving her insane. The first day, she had been so willing to do such awful things. The second, she was calm beneath her mask. The third, she was a ball of nerves.

She's cold and yet hot, pained and somehow numb. She's comfortably sober, and yet uncomfortably not drunk. She's so complex, a simple.

She doesn't even understand herself.

It's at night though, when she crawls in the corner of some room upstairs, she's shivering. The darkness is surrounding her, drowning her in its never ending presence. The wind howls and the moon weeps, and somewhere a wolf bays to the great orb of light in the night.

But the shadows surround her now, whispering to her as they drift over her. She's curled tightly, pulling the thin blanket over her shoulders to hide her face, and she begins to scream. She's terrified, unsure and helpless. Ginny isn't scared of the dark, no. It's what hides in the dark.

Her.

~()~

She left a note for her family.

Wouldn't be right to step out of their lives without admitting the truths. How she hated Harry. How she killed Percy. How she became pregnant. How she became the monster she is now. How she regrets nothing.

She knows the Burrow will live under the shadow of death for eternity now. One son died in battle, another from a sister to even the score. A daughter sacrificing the light to stray to the path of thorns and revenge.

She tells them that she perhaps loved them once, and she wishes that they live their lives however they see fit.

She hopes that they die cold and alone, just as she had lived.

Cold and alone.

~()~

Her womb is swollen.

The voices that once whispered to her now rage and scream, driving her insane with their constant presence. Malfoy is slowly dying, unable to stand the constant torture. She knows the time has come when he gives her one look of such brokenness, she can't stand herself. Not anymore.

She kisses him. Softly. Not the rough, hateful kisses that had left her lips swollen and his own bloody. Soft. Stolen gently.

And then, she plunges the blade through his stomach, and she makes sure it's a swift death.

And so it was.

She's alone now, with a body beneath the floorboards of the Hollow, and she's unsure where to step now. If she might disturb his final rest. So she remains still. She stops eating. Sleeping. She conjures candle after candle to prevent the night from seeping in and destroying the remaining grip of reality she still clings to. Time ticks by, unwavering. Always there. Time cares for nothing. Young or old, pain or happiness. It satisfies all, and yet satisfies no one.

She accepts it as a fact of life, and begins to let go, ever so slowly of her grip on holding so tight to the past. The future remains unknown, unsure. But the present-

_The present was decided years ago, when she picked the diary for the first time. _

~()~

It was silent when she picked the blade up one last time.

~()~

'_Like the smallest bee packs a sting  
like a pawn checkmates a King.  
We'll attack at the crack of dawn._

Build a ladder if there's a wall  
don't be afraid to slip and fall.  
Speak for yourself or they'll speak for you.

_Like a fire  
don't need water,  
like a jury  
Needs a liar,  
like a riot  
don't need order,  
like a madman  
needs a martyr.'_

~()~

It was a laugh that greeted her, when she opened her eyes. The red headed man looked down at her.

"You've come a long way, haven't you?" Fred smiled.

~()~

**I think I had to fight with every word of this story to get it to come out. I don't believe in happy endings, because to me, they don't exist. Ginny Weasley to me was a person with rather poor luck. I wanted to see a side of her that wasn't pretty, that was coated in grime, blood and sweat. I wanted her to be someone who wasn't perfect. She wasn't scared of the dark; she was scared for what could be in the dark. She wasn't afraid of what was behind her, she was afraid of what was beneath her. **

**I saw her in the series carelessly work her way through men. To me, Ginny lost every bit of happiness she had, and was trying to find it again. I saw her try once again to find it, battling for dominance with Malfoy. She never truly had a good close friend it seemed, because after Tom who listened to every word she ever wrote, what else was there? **

'_Evil is always devising more corrosive misery through man's restless need to exact revenge out of his hate.'  
_


End file.
